


on the pitcher's mound

by a_secondhand_sorrow



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Aftereffects of Necromancy, Body Horror, Character Study, Dehumanization, Dissasociation, Gen, Reincarnation, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, but shes. reincarnated. so?, circa season 9, inspired by Jaylen's brief trade to the Pies, its not really violence... just blaseball, never thought I'd tag that!, rated Teen for general grossness and mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_secondhand_sorrow/pseuds/a_secondhand_sorrow
Summary: Jaylen Hotdogfingers lives a life of bargains, of almost-but-not-quite, of bad and terrible and astonishingly good luck. She is on the pitcher's mound again, where she always ends up.There is nothing but her and the pitcher's mound, forever and infinitely. Her and the mound and the ball and whatever unholy gamble she is forced to take. Her and the mound and the ball and a weakly fluttering pulse and whatever shreds of humanity remain inside her torn-up Garages uniform.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & The Garages, Jaylen Hotdogfingers & The Microphone
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	on the pitcher's mound

**Author's Note:**

> no thoughts only blaseball
> 
> (by that i mean i wrote this and then had to get an extension on my history essay)

She’s at the mound again, where she always ends up. 

Life has a funny way of doing that, doesn’t it - jumping from similar moment to similar moment, aligning itself so perfectly around blaseball that nothing else matters. Before the void, she knows-well. She knows she had a life. A family. She didn’t just hatch from an egg and start playing blaseball the next day as the star pitcher of the Garages. She was mayor, wasn’t she? A satisfying career. Friends. Drinks. Nights spent out. Songs with the band. Maybe the shadows and the void took the memories from her, but all the same they’re - well, buried. Missing. Like a space where a lost tooth had been, smarting and metallic and fleshy and warm. Or maybe her life truly was  _ this _ pre-void, pre-debt. The same collection of moments structured around the true meaning of her life, her true purpose. Maybe she hasn’t changed, and she’s just deluded herself into thinking something so insignificant as being the first to die for the sake of hubris was enough to change her into something inhuman. 

If pre-void is a missing tooth, time in the void is a rib aching in her chest. She remember everything and she remembers nothing, remembers the rubber on the pitcher's mound black with decay and falling apart beneath her feet, remembers her fingers biting into the ball so hard that they tear and bleed and scab and bleed again until it’s stained a jagged red, remembers throwing the ball so hard everything in her shoulder snaps and cracks, her arm, her wrist, and through poking shards she still hurls it, sending it off like a tiny cannon or a giant bullet, feeling it’s impact with whatever  _ thing  _ waited beyond the fog. She knows there was nothing but that, nothing less and nothing more. Just an infinity until dirt and blood cling to her like a second skin, her Garages uniform nearly unrecognizable and yet the only familiar thing. 

And if before is a cruel joke of a life, after is a heartless crime. They dragged her out, didn’t they, her teammates? They shouted  _ Hotdogfingers  _ and slapped her rapidly knitting-together bones and talked of life as though she could still participate in it. Because she wasn’t there, not really - she wasn’t there how they wanted her to be. Not a martyr to a shelled god she has never seen and can never believe in but can certainly fear. Not the holy face they want to see, just the scarred and bloodied version. Not the innocent victim, nor the vengeful demon. How do you move forward when you’re perched on a pedestal and you can’t remember where your feet begin?

She is still on that mound, pitching until her body falls apart and comes back together in the space of a moment, pitching until she is nothing but a vehicle for the ball, a pawn for the gods to accept. She is still on that mound, not a drop of blood in her veins, nothing but her and blaseball and the ever cracking fire of incineration and whispers of  _ how tragic she was the first to go, how tragic her life was cut short.  _ But no one will say  _ how tragic her eternity merges with some poor carbon copy of being real.  _ She is still on that mound - until she is on the mound again, but her uniform is fresh and starched and audience fills the stands with chants of  _ WE ARE ALL LOVE BLASEBALL  _ and her teammates stand around her, ready, alive. Is she alive? She can’t be alive. She presses two shaky fingers to her inner wrist, and after a moment it flutters - a pulse, strong, then gentle, strong, then gentle. Alive. Blood coursing through her, though the rest is empty. But she is on the mound, and her foot digs into the rubber, and so she pitches. 

Nothing looks off, not at first, but she knows it is anyway. She doesn’t know anything anymore, but just like she knows her existence is wrong she knows that this is wrong, her pitching. Each one tears at her mended bones, grinds into her ears, drags her body downward. A chill surrounds her, only they're not even playing the Tigers. Dread, and it’s the closest thing she’s felt to human since - since - since. Jaylen blinks away tears, always the perfect icon, the perfect martyr. She pitches, and she sees everything, everything she has never wanted to see, everything she sees daily. It hurts. God, it hurts. She didn’t want this. No one wants this, to be alive and not, to be divine and not, to be idolized and a demon. The gods do not want this, but the gods are cruel and will take out their unhappiness on -

On the rival team, because as she collapses to the heap, her pitch hits the batter. 

Jaylen wants to beg to be taken off the mound, but every time she tries it just disappears. No words, no voice, no memory. They love her, does she know? They idolize her. They play their games with gods that only she has met and faced and feared properly to keep her tattered self in front of their eyes. They would never let her sit in reserve. They don’t blame her, you know. She might throw the balls but she doesn’t choose who hurts, after all. She may tear another part of her shred of humanity away with every pitch, and she may be rapidly losing the ability to regret it at all, but they don’t blame her. And still, she can only remember the pitching mound, the thrill of a pitch that she knows so well, there sickening crack of yet another turned Unstable, her fault and not hers at all. 

Is it worse that she cannot bring herself to regret it? Because if nothing else, when she winds up and aims true as she always has and her arm fails her, the gods fail her, at least she feels something, some rapidly dwindling shred of humanity that raises its ugly head and screams in agony as yet another tiny weight is lifted off of her shoulders. It’s a relief and it’s a new agony, and that’s all being human is, right? Shared relief and agony. When she hits them, turns them Unstable, it’s like she’s back on the mound with a beating heart and functioning lungs and every nerve in her body being fried in such comically slow pain that she can still feel it, sometimes. With guilt and pain is proof that she is  _ human,  _ and she hates herself for wanting that when she’s clearly the furthest from human a person can become. 

_ There is still more to pay,  _ the gods whisper in her ears.  _ There is always more to pay, and you must be the one to pay it, to give it to us. For you were the one who was permitted to come back. You wanted this, didn’t you, Jaylen? You wanted this. You who committed no exceptional sin but to have extraordinarily bad luck, who did nothing magnificent but became an idol for it anyway. You, the first martyr, the first stolen. Pay us the price of your ingratitude. Pay back our kindness tenfold. _

And still, every moment is like a dream from which she can’t escape, blurs of faces and names and buildings as she walks by. She is surrounded in fog, one she cannot escape from, until her feet find the rubber of the mound and her fingers press to her pulse, at once achingly alive just in time to damn someone else to a fate as uncertain as hers. 

She stands on the mound and the microphone beckons her - or, no, she beckons it with some sliver of the power they think she holds. She is not who she used to be, after all, and there must be some advantage to it. 

_ Hello, Jaylen Hotdogfingers,  _ the microphone crackles, and she suddenly feels as though her skin is not there, that the microphone can see to her very core.  _ How nice of you to finally pay a visit.  _

She cannot respond. She thinks her vocal cords have been shredded from long ago. 

_ Such a pity,  _ the microphone croons.  _ We so looked forward to playing with you for a little longer. And you do know how we hate to have our toys taken away.  _

“It’s not their fault,” she croaks, lifting a hand to sense her pulse. Faint, but there, beating at the base of her throat. Her voice sounds harsh and uneven. She hasn’t used it since Before. She didn’t think she ever could again. Her throat feels empty and then it feels filled with moss, a gag of the most effective kind. 

_ If not theirs, then whose is it?  _

“They don’t dese-” Jaylen manages before the moss overtakes her again, decay crumbling into her gut. 

_ Deserve is a false word, pitcher. Do not speak to me of what anyone deserves when you see so little of how the scales balance themselves, when you have had them so unfairly tipped in your favor. There is no such thing as karma and good deeds; what happens will happen. Deserving does not have a hand in your story, in any of your stories. Speak blasphemy again and you’ll know more of yourself than anyone should see.  _

Jaylen bites her tongue so hard it bleeds, and it’s only once she tastes the metallic tang that she finds the strength to dredge up words. “My debt is mine to pay, not theirs.”

_ So you turned yourself into an idol? _

She picks up the ball in her right hand, finding the seams with her calloused fingertips before snapping it back into the glove with practiced precision.

_ Very well, pitcher. I suppose you’re right. But they are not permitted to do that to us without cost.  _

Suddenly, the microphone felt very close, not the same distance it had been before.  _ You cannot comprehend how easily your road has been paved, Jaylen Hotdogfingers. And your request only makes it bumpier.  _

_ I hope you maintain the certainty of your choice.  _

And, just before Jaylen releases the ball again, the microphone came back to her.  _ To the right. Up a smidge. There you go. You know what will happen to you if you don’t, pitcher, correct? You know what fate awaits you, awaits your friends.  _

The weight on her back shuffles and folds in, redistributing. A new bargain, a new form of payment, new terms of interest. Same debt. Same guy-wrenching debt. 

And she knows what will happen if she doesn't obey, so she casts as much of a prayer as her broken mind can conjure and lets her true aim strike the batter between the ribs. 

The microphone chuckles so only she could hear. 

The payment is new, indeed, but it is not being Unstable, it is not incinerating until they’re gone completely. It is Flickering, being alive one moment and gone the next but still  _ alive  _ when you come back. It is ceasing to exist and, in the breath you were gone, reappearing. New jersey, new team, same soul. Probably. 

It...hurts, probably, though Jaylen is not one to guess at pain. It hurts, and the guilt is there, but it is  _ better,  _ isn’t it? To switch allegiance and keep your beating heart. To drain the blood of fraternity from your veins and fill back up again. 

Anything is better than Unstable. 

(At least it’s not Death. At least it’s not the Void.)

That is the mantra in her head both on and off the field. That is the mantra that carries her when her feet cannot. That is the mantra that drowns out the screams of those she has damned. 

They’re playing the Philly Pies. Jaylen barely registers it even though the scent of sugar clings to them in waves. She is up to pitch again, and she hears the clinical voice of the gods whispering in her ear.  _ Betsy Trombone,  _ they whisper, and she hardly cares, too clinically removed to hear the edge in their words. Too relieved to be alive and on the mound again to care about who she’s about to hurt. Jaylen Hotdogfingers pitches the baseball straight into Betsy Trombone, or something that used to  _ be  _ Betsy Trombone. 

And she Flickers. 

Her fingers find her left wrist immediately, digging desperately and probably leaving marks, but then she

_ nothing  _

has no wrists and she has no fingers and when she’s alive again her fingers are practically inside of her skin, touching her bones. 

This is worse, this is so much worse than she could have imagined, so much more painful on the organs she barely holds in check anymore. She -

_ nothing _

-can barely-

_ nothing  _

-feel anything in her-

_ repent repent repent this is your debt to pay and your cross to bear and being nothing is too kind a fate for a sinner like you to  _

-wrist, where’s her beating heart, has she decayed right back into a-

_ claim you the false deity the false god you are truly an idol to be prayed to and to repent for all those who would dare place their faith in a husk _

-uniform. A new uniform, smelling faintly of sugar. She can’t remember the last time she smelled anything. 

She is on the bench, as though in reserve, but there aren't any instruments laying around or heads laying on her shoulder. Everything is pastel, open, airy. No Garages Navy to be seen. 

She has been Feedbacked, and she has never felt more trapped. 

_ A better fate than what the gods wanted,  _ Jaylen had thought. She’s fallen to the same hubris that had killed her the first time, too presumptuous that everyone would prefer forceful separation than the void. 

It was foolish to think she could outplay the gods, really. Because in the end they always got what they wanted. 

She pressed her fingers to her wrist again, breaths jagged and shallow, and felt nothing. 

Sometimes, they even got more. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know we got our fave undead pitcher back today but jaylen's switch to the phillies had me feeling some type of way


End file.
